The Idaho women’s basketball team was able to complete the road sweep and win its second WAC game in a row when the Vandals beat New Mexico State 57-51 Saturday night.
The Vandals (6-10, 3-2 WAC) began the road trip with a come-from-behind victory against Denver on Thursday and followed it up with another win against the Aggies. The Vandals will now return home for a couple games, starting with Louisiana Tech on Thursday and UT-Arlington on Saturday.
The win was thanks mostly to Idaho’s defensive performance. Idaho allowed the Aggies to just 14 field goals on the night on 61 attempts (23 percent). It’s the first time since 2007 the Vandals held an opponent to under 15 field goals in a game. Idaho also caused 17 turnovers.
Coach Jon Newlee said he was more than happy with the way the defense came out and played.
“I’m proud of our defensive effort in the second half, holding them to 15 percent, unbelievable,” Newlee said. “We need to play like we did tonight and protect our home floor next week.”
The Vandals took off in the second half and built a 15-point lead, but as has happened multiple times this season, Idaho allowed the opponent to climb back in and the Aggies cut the lead to two with just more than five minutes left. Idaho responded and hung on for the win.
Newlee said the road trip was an important one, especially considering the close games the Vandals have dropped this season.
“We needed to win on the road because we gave away some games at home,” Newlee said. “We came in against two teams ahead of us, and we leave tied with them at worst.”
The Vandals were led by junior Alyssa Charlston’s second straight double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Senior Jessica Graham was the only other Vandal in double figures with 10 points.
Idaho has been utilizing the 3-ball as of late, but it only had four in this game with three of those coming from freshman Christina Salvatore, who finished with nine.
“It’s nice to win a game when we’re not making a lot of 3s,” Newlee said. “That’s what we need, total team effort. It’s not one person, it’s everybody on the roster and we saw that tonight.”
The one silver lining for New Mexico State was rebounding. The Vandals came into the game as one of the top rebounding teams in the conference, but got out-rebounded 47-41, but the Aggies weren’t able to use that advantage to put points on the board.
Kevin Bingaman can be reached at [email protected]